Acer’s beefy Aspire AS8943G series notebooks have received a grunt update, with the 18.4-inch 1080p-capable machines now toting ATI’s Radeon 5850 GPU with its own 2GB of memory. A range of Intel Core i7 chips are available – up to the i7-740QM – and either 4GB or 8GB of RAM.

There’s also HDMI, eSATA, WiFi b/g/n, gigabit ethernet and a 1.3-megapixel webcam, together with a 500GB HDD as standard and room for a second internal hard-drive. Blu-ray and a FireWire port round out the media-friendly features, and Acer’s unusual dual-mode touchpad changes between a regular multitouch trackpad and shortcuts for playback.

Unsurprisingly, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the high price; the AS8943G series is still at the expensive end of Acer’s spectrum. Kicking off at at $1,499.99, the Acer Aspire AS8943G-9319 and the Acer Aspire AS8943G-9429 are each available now.